Since President Obama's election, right-wing media have tried to find wrongdoing by top Obama administration officials. The pseudo-scandal they have contrived have resulted in investigations, congressional hearings, and right-wing media bluster, but they have not resulted in any evidence of wrongdoing by top Obama administration officials.

Members of the right-wing media have promoted the claim that President Obama has "gutted" Medicare in order to fund health care reform, while GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is attempting to preserve the program. In fact, though Obama and Ryan have advocated similar spending reductions, the Affordable Care Act would not affect Medicare benefits, while Ryan's plan is projected to harm current and future seniors' care.

Fox News' defense of Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare plan has incorporated language taken straight out of a GOP memo to Republican congressional candidates, proving oncemorethat they are in business to act as the communications arm of the Republican Party.

Last Monday Politico reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) released a memo hours after Ryan was announced as Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate mandating specific language that GOP congressional candidates should use when defending Ryan's budget and spinning Medicare attacks in their favor. From Politico:

"Do not say: 'entitlement reform,' 'privatization,' 'every option is on the table,'" the National Republican Congressional Committee said in an email memo. "Do say: 'strengthen,' 'secure,' 'save,' 'preserve, 'protect.'"

Although the instructions were addressed to GOP politicians, Fox got the memo. Tonight on Fox News' The Five, co-host Dana Perino repeated GOP talking points multiple times to spin Ryan's destructive plan as a way to "preserve" Medicare:

PERINO: Paul Ryan's budget proposal, that included a way to preserve Medicare, has become a lightning rod issue in the 2012 presidential race, now that he has stepped into the race.

[...]

PERINO: Is it possibly, maybe, a brilliant move that now we are talking about Medicare and, as Bill Kristol explained, there were cuts of $760 billion, in Obamacare -- in Medicare to pay for Obamacare. Ryan would have preserved it in the trust fund and Romney says "well we'll just deal with that later." Maybe not such a bad idea. [emphasis added]

On the August 14 edition of Fox News' The Five, the co-hosts adopted the same talking points to defend Ryan's plan.

Fox News' The Five went to bat for Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan by defending his controversial and harmful proposed changes to Medicare while reviving the myth that Obama's health care law will create a review board to ration health care.

Fox News is obscuring the negative impact of Congressman Paul Ryan's Medicare plan on seniors by accusing President Obama and the Democrats of "stoking fears" about the plan. In fact, Ryan's plan would adversely affect current and future seniors, forcing them, among other things, to pay more for prescription drugs, and it would create a voucher system that would drive up health care costs.

Right-wing media have claimed that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is "the ideological heir" to Ronald Reagan, while ignoring a big part of what makes this statement true: Reagan and Ryan both supported policies that vastly increased the federal deficit.

On Saturday Mitt Romney named Rep. Ryan as his running mate, resulting in praise from right-wing media figures. Rush Limbaugh proclaimed that Ryan is "from the camp of Ronaldus Magnus."

But none of them mentioned one of the most important similarities between Ryan and Reagan: the fact that, while they talked about reining in deficits, they both supported policies that vastly increased the deficit.

According to the Office of Management and Budget's historical data, during his presidency, Reagan saw federal spending increase by 22 percent. Additionally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the federal deficit nearly doubled under Reagan, going from about $790 billion to $1.55 trillion.

Reagan also signed debt ceiling increases 18 times during his presidency.

Similarly, Ryan's most recent budget would explode the deficit over the next decade.

Fox News' afternoon chat show The Five has dipped back into the well of conspiracy theories about President Obama's background. Co-host Andrea Tantaros suggested that Obama might have applied to college as a foreign student, an idea that echoes an April Fool's Day hoax from a years-old chain email.

Tantaros brought up this idea during a discussion of Sen. Harry Reid's statement that a Bain Capital investor told him that Mitt Romney didn't pay taxes for 10 years. As a comparison, Tantaros wondered what would happen if she said that "some girl" called her and told her that Obama had applied as a foreigner.

Fox News host Mike Huckabee floated the idea that Obama might have received loans as a foreign student on The O'Reilly Factor in January.

Also during The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld delivered a self-described "cheap shot" about Obama's birth certificate and referred to him as "the Kenyan."

From the August 3 edition of The Five:

Gutfeld is a former editor of the U.K. edition of Maxim magazine and is positioned as the show's comic relief. His attempts at humor often consist of sexist comments.

The New York Times was forced to issue two corrections after relying on Capitol Hill anonymous sourcing for its flawed report on emails from former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Clinton debacle is the latest example of why the media should be careful when relying on leaks from partisan congressional sources -- this is far from the first time journalists who did have been burned.

Several Fox News figures are attempting to shift partial blame onto Samuel DuBose for his own death at the hands of a Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop, arguing DuBose should have cooperated with the officer's instructions if he wanted to avoid "danger."

Iowa radio host Steve Deace is frequently interviewed as a political analyst by mainstream media outlets like NPR, MSNBC, and The Hill when they need an insider's perspective on the GOP primary and Iowa political landscape. However, these outlets may not all be aware that Deace gained his insider status in conservative circles by broadcasting full-throated endorsements of extreme right-wing positions on his radio show and writing online columns filled with intolerant views that he never reveals during main stream media appearances.